Ezekiel 16:35

God's Judgment On Her Behaviour - She will Be Treated As An Adulteress.

“For this reason, O prostitute, hear the word of Yahweh, Thus says the Lord Yahweh, because your brass was poured out and your nakedness discovered through your whoredoms with your lovers, and because of all the idols of your abominations, and for the blood of your children which you gave them, therefore behold I will gather all your lovers with whom you have taken pleasure, and all those whom you have loved, with all those whom you have hated, I will even gather them against you on every side and will make open your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness.”

Ezekiel now directly addresses Israel, by ‘the word of Yahweh', as a prostitute in process of her profession. She is stripped of her clothing and her discharges come out of her. There may be the idea that she continued to ply her trade during her menstrual period (‘like brass poured out?), for menstrual discharge was looked on as ritually ‘unclean'. But he may just have in mind discharges during sexual intercourse. Thus here she was revealing herself as Ezekiel saw her, disgusting and without shame

The use of the word ‘brass' here must be compared with its use by Ezekiel in connection with refining. (He speaks as a layman, not as a metalsmith). It has in mind inferior brass with its impurities which it is difficult to refine out. Thus in Ezekiel 24:11 it is closely allied to dross and parallels the ‘filthiness' and ‘rust' that gathers in an inferior brass cauldron, the impurities of which cannot be removed even when it melts in the fire; and in Ezekiel 22:18 the idea is of brass being melted in the furnace and being like dross.

Compare Jeremiah 6:28 where Jeremiah says, ‘they are all as brass and iron, they all deal corruptly' and along with iron it is seen as containing impurities such that it cannot be refined, and is compared with ‘refuse silver'. So the ‘brass poured out' here has in mind what is inferior and unrefinable because of its impurities. ‘As brass poured out' may well have become a familiar and vivid way of speaking of a woman's discharges.

Israel's disgusting state is then clarified. She is responsible for the multiplying of idols, and the lewdness that goes with them, they are like her discharges. And she is especially responsible for the blood of her slain children offered to these idols.